Sunday, March 20, 2011

I spent a great day at Haydonleigh Primary School visiting the Let's Get cooking Club with Swindon North MP Justin Tomlinson. The children worked with parents to prepare a carrot and coriander soup and an apple crumble.

Justin is a passionate supporter of cooking in schools and was keen to find out about Let's get Cooking clubs work. We finished off our visit with a school dinner.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

The barbecued chicken was a new recipe that our cook Sally tried out for the first time today. It was very popular with the children. We have now switched to home made coleslaw which tastes great. I am having a school lunch on Thursday in Swindon with the local Conservative MP Justin Tomlinson as we are going to visit a Let's Get Cooking Club.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Unbelievable that this government really expect junk food companies to give a lead on a policy aimed at reducing the consumption of the high fat/salt/sugar products said companies need to sell more of for their bottom line.

Off to meet Defra tomorrow with some Myles and Colette from Garden Organic. We are exploring exciting plans to set up a task force to get all schools food growing. Will report back!

Here is a great project for UK schools to help us teach children where there food comes from. The inspirational Chris Young,(featured recently in the Observer and on BBC 2's The Great British Food Revival)has come up with a great way to learn about breadmaking. If you have access to 1 square metre of ground and a handful of earth you can take part.

If you are a teacher you can get free seeds and download a guide which will take you through the whole process by clicking here Get you skates on. You need to be planting your seeds by April.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

I spent today at Wimbledon Park work shadowing the exceptionally talented music AST teacher. As part of my mission to protect school dinners I make it a principle to eat a school dinner at every school I visit so am delighted to report that the food at Wimbledon Park is excellent!

Monday, March 7, 2011

We have some amazing teachers in our secondary schools doing a wonderful job in challenging circumstances. I came across this video by chance on twitter through discussion with @jennitonic80 about the possibility of losing cooking from the curiculum. Jenni created it to inspire her students. But you can rest assured they don't just passively watch because she provides opportunities for them to learn by actually cooking. However this is all threatened. If we don't get Michael Gove to change his plans then our youth may lose the chance to learn how to prepare fresh food for themselves.

Friday, March 4, 2011

I thought I would carry about a bit of ad hoc research and get some feedback on today's school dinners. I was a bit surprised how quickly the children focused on the healthiness of the meals. I think it is because the children are eager to please and think that adults are only interested in school food with regard to healthy eating.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Well worth a watch. School food is a global issue and diet related health problems are hitting the poorest and most vulnerable citizens the world over. What a difference decent school food programmes could make if we cared enough to act.

Our Life North West have been doing something fantastic detailed work with all sorts of communities that are more likely to suffer from poor health. One of the barriers to good health identified by several of their focus groups is lack of cooking skills. If you are not able to prepare fresh food then you are more likely to rely on processed ready meals or take-aways which are generally more unhealthy and less nutritious than freshly prepared food.

Hardly rocket science. You would think that at a society committed to improving the health of the nation would ensure that ALL kids would get basic cooking lessons to ensure they had the skills to prepare a healthy diet.

After years of campaigning we eventually won a commitment from the government to ensure that all year 9 students would receive 24 hours of practical, hands on cookery which focused on preparing family meals. Schools were given three years to prepare and money to spend on equipping classrooms and training teachers.(Incidentally these lessons will be focusing on real cooking skills not the 'design a pizza box' type lesson so beloved of the food industry)

Mr Gove,the current Secretary of State for Education has other ideas. He is keen to slim down the national curriculum and reduce the element of compulsion for schools. if he gets his way then cookery will no longer be compulsory. Secondary schools are going to be under the most tremendous pressure to improve their Ebacc ratings so many will claw back the time that would be spent on cookery lessons to spend time on subjects that improve their league table ratings.

If we can generate a huge response to this then we stand a chance of winning.

We need the health professionals who are currently looking at obesity reduction strategies to put pressure on education to retain cooking lessons. How joined up is it too have Department of Health looking at behaviour change strategies to reduce obesity at exactly the same time that the Department of Education wants to ditch responsibility for life skills?

Can you help us spread this campaign? All suggestions gratefully received!

Merton Parents for Better Food in School

I helped to set up this organisation in 2005, which successfully campaigned to improve the quality of school meals in the London Borough of Merton. We persuaded the council to ditch mass-produced, low-quality food and introduce new, healthy menus, with food cooked from fresh at each school. Check out the MPFBFIS website.